Incidence of tongue-tie.  I saw a tongue-tie baby on Fri. and one yest. on
Monday.  Neither were nursing well, and both mothers had sore nipples.
Positioning changes that tipped back the head and got the chin closer helped
some with the discomfort, but it was notable that when I counted how many
suck-swallow-breathe seqences babies could maintain before needing to rest,
they were very low.  The Monday baby could manage 3 full nutritive sucks
with swallowing before he had to stop and recover.  The Fri. baby could
barely stay latched, and hadn't stooled in 4 days when I saw her.  I have a
nephew who is severely tongue-tied (by visual assessment) but nursed well as
an infant and has clear speech. He has very bad teeth and will need
othodontia.  I have 2 other nephews and a neice with tongue who failed to
thrive at breast, were weaned precipitously, have speech problems.  One (now
21) was clipped for speech at age 4.  The little neice and nephew are
virtually unintelligible speakers at ages 4 and 2.

My clinical observations suggest that limitations in the range of movement
of the tongue increase the work of feeding and cause babies to make wierd
compensatory adjustments to their suck in order to try to get food.  These
often are painful.  For more info. on my observations and pictures  see the
ch. in The Breastfeeding Atlas.

Barbara Wilson-Clay, BSEd, IBCLC
Austin Lactation Associates, Austin, Texas
http://www.lactnews.com

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